As an artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist, Julie Gough’s career has been dedicated to unearthing Tasmania’s Aboriginal history and her own place within it.

Being clipped on the head by an eagle is an impressive way to birth a career in art. This is exactly what happened to Julie Gough when she was riding pillion on a motorbike down a remote highway 20 years ago. The eagle hit and Gough reconsidered her options. A creative life of self- discovery emerged on top of the list.

Throughout her artistic career, this renowned Tasmanian artist has journeyed a personal and creative path exploring historical stories and their connection to memory, place and our perception of the past. Her maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage is a strong influence on her work and the desire to unearth the stories of her people runs deep.

“My major motivation to make art is aligned to my ongoing curiosity and concern about Australian history, particularly the colonial period and cross-cultural contact and interactions in the 19th century,” Gough explains. “I am trying to unravel what happened here and reconstruct what was often not well recorded or was even purposely erased or silenced by the colonising majority in terms of Aboriginal history.”

Encompassing sculpture, installation, sound and video, Gough’s practice is interwoven with tradition and history, allowing her work to travel across time to unify the past with the present in a reimagining of unresolved narratives. “Some stories permeate beyond the written or spoken word to plague me,” the artist says. “They tend to present – almost uncannily – the means, materials and techniques by which I can represent those stories in the form of art.” Using found objects such as cuttlefish bone, tea tree and shell, Gough is able to link works such as Locus, 2008, and Fugitive History: Killymoon, Spearloar, Head Count, 2008, back to the encounters of her ancestors, connecting to the native environment and the traces of those who once lived there.

Most recently, Gough’s ability to reimagine the past has led to her inclusion in the second season of Aboriginal art series Art + Soul. Presenter and respected curator Hetti Perkins says she chose Gough for her ability to “accumulate and process information (and misinformation) and chart a course through it”. Having collected Gough’s work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales during her time as senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Perkins goes on to say, “Julie has always created work with conceptual rigour. She is a natural-born artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist. She makes her work with such conviction and that is what makes her and her art so compelling. Her works have integrity and they are sublimely beautiful.”

Looking over the breadth of Gough’s work, it is clear her career has been a considered process that has evolved through meticulous research and intensive creative study. “About 80 per cent of my available art time is dedicated to researching in the archives and on the ground, outdoors, mostly in Tasmania,” she says. Through this methodical progression of research and making, Gough has developed a unique visual language, conceptually rich with signs and symbols designed to trigger memory and emotion.

In Medical Series, 1994, a collection of metal cases displayed objects such as human hair and plaster teeth, evoking an uncomfortable familiarity and recalling outdated scientific experiments used to determine identity and physical attributes as a way to suggest racial inferiority. “I think art reaches an audience differently than history books and film documentaries,” states Gough. “Artworks bypass a viewer’s regular channels of sought input. They are sensed and felt, they gain a foothold before the ‘rational’ brain directs a viewer to their own precon- ceived beliefs on how to read and respond to the world. This is history re-visioned by stealth via art.”

Gough is a traveller in every sense. Her first big break was having her work selected by Judy Annear for Perspecta in 1994 and, since then, Gough has moved through a series of residencies, scholarships and academic posts, making her way across the globe via destinations including Mauritius, New York, Paris, Liverpool and Ireland. This physical experience of travel fits well with her work and the concept of place is an integral part of Gough’s art practice.

“The point about place for me is by being at various places, I am actively reconnecting with them or learning afresh about places beyond my ancestry and cultural connections, pressing my own ability to face, recognise and move beyond the limitations of having grown up in suburbia,” she explains. “Where possible, I am mostly attempting to see and experience place in the manner of my ancestors. Sometimes it feels close and that is exhilarating.”

In Traveller, 2013, a video depicting Gough attempting to hitchhike her way across Tasmania to culturally significant locations such as the Nut (a giant volcanic plug jutting into the sea on the north-west coast), the viewer watches as she moves through the colonised landscape, screwing together her spears and awkwardly hunting a horse along the way. Often relying on video to document these journeys, Gough uses location and memory to record the precarious links between past and present. She describes this expressive and ritualistic process as “a reteaching of self, as an adult with anxieties, self-imposed constraints and misreadings to work through and excise”.

While most of Gough’s work is centred on colonial and Aboriginal history, her interest in the significance of place and memory has also extended to locales further afield. During a trip to Liverpool, Gough researched the history of Bluecoat Hospital’s school and orphanage, consequently creating HOME sweet HOME, 1999. Struck by the cold, unemotional rendering of gravestones listing the names of 122 children who died in institutions such as Bluecoat, Gough painstakingly took graphite rubbings and transferred the names onto six white mattresses. Forming each name from thousands of tiny pinheads (since many of the children were exploited for labour as pin-makers), HOME sweet HOME became a poignant act of recognition and remembrance. Similar to the fastidious construction of works reflecting her own history, Gough repeatedly uses materials significant to a place to reimagine the past and bring it back into the light.

For Gough, one of the most personally affecting works to create has been Observance, 2012. Over three camping trips to her traditional country of Tebrikunna (the north-east coast of Tasmania), Gough filmed her experience of living within the landscape, alone yet constantly interrupted by eco tourists. “I learnt a lot about life, seasons, plants and animals at that place,” she recalls. “The resonances of the past became clearer and louder with each extended stay.” Further describing the work in an artist statement, Gough goes on to say, “Observance is about trespass. It is a meditation about history, memory and ancestry set amidst the ongoing globalisation of my ancestral coastlands by anonymous groups of uninvited walkers, the descendants of the colonisers.”

Currently working towards solo shows at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne later this year and at Hobart’s Bett Gallery for mid-2015, Gough continues to poignantly inform our perception of the past and reveal how it remains a persistent under- current of contemporary experience. Reflecting on her career Gough observes, “Each work leads to the next and they are all part of a continuum. My work is a kind of pulse, demonstrating I am still alive and responding by making art.” It is a steady pulse that beats strong and clear.

The second series of Art + Soul begins on ABC1 on Tuesday 8 July, 8.30pm, as part of NAIDOC week; it continues over three episodes until Tuesday 22 July.

Julie Gough is exhibiting at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne, from 23 October to 16 November and at Bett Gallery, Hobart, in July 2015.

Julie Gough: Travelling Through History

As an artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist, Julie Gough’s career has been dedicated to unearthing Tasmania’s Aboriginal history and her own place within it.

Being clipped on the head by an eagle is an impressive way to birth a career in art. This is exactly what happened to Julie Gough when she was riding pillion on a motorbike down a remote highway 20 years ago. The eagle hit and Gough reconsidered her options. A creative life of self- discovery emerged on top of the list.

Throughout her artistic career, this renowned Tasmanian artist has journeyed a personal and creative path exploring historical stories and their connection to memory, place and our perception of the past. Her maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage is a strong influence on her work and the desire to unearth the stories of her people runs deep.

“My major motivation to make art is aligned to my ongoing curiosity and concern about Australian history, particularly the colonial period and cross-cultural contact and interactions in the 19th century,” Gough explains. “I am trying to unravel what happened here and reconstruct what was often not well recorded or was even purposely erased or silenced by the colonising majority in terms of Aboriginal history.”

Encompassing sculpture, installation, sound and video, Gough’s practice is interwoven with tradition and history, allowing her work to travel across time to unify the past with the present in a reimagining of unresolved narratives. “Some stories permeate beyond the written or spoken word to plague me,” the artist says. “They tend to present – almost uncannily – the means, materials and techniques by which I can represent those stories in the form of art.” Using found objects such as cuttlefish bone, tea tree and shell, Gough is able to link works such as Locus, 2008, and Fugitive History: Killymoon, Spearloar, Head Count, 2008, back to the encounters of her ancestors, connecting to the native environment and the traces of those who once lived there.

Most recently, Gough’s ability to reimagine the past has led to her inclusion in the second season of Aboriginal art series Art + Soul. Presenter and respected curator Hetti Perkins says she chose Gough for her ability to “accumulate and process information (and misinformation) and chart a course through it”. Having collected Gough’s work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales during her time as senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Perkins goes on to say, “Julie has always created work with conceptual rigour. She is a natural-born artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist. She makes her work with such conviction and that is what makes her and her art so compelling. Her works have integrity and they are sublimely beautiful.”

Looking over the breadth of Gough’s work, it is clear her career has been a considered process that has evolved through meticulous research and intensive creative study. “About 80 per cent of my available art time is dedicated to researching in the archives and on the ground, outdoors, mostly in Tasmania,” she says. Through this methodical progression of research and making, Gough has developed a unique visual language, conceptually rich with signs and symbols designed to trigger memory and emotion.

In Medical Series, 1994, a collection of metal cases displayed objects such as human hair and plaster teeth, evoking an uncomfortable familiarity and recalling outdated scientific experiments used to determine identity and physical attributes as a way to suggest racial inferiority. “I think art reaches an audience differently than history books and film documentaries,” states Gough. “Artworks bypass a viewer’s regular channels of sought input. They are sensed and felt, they gain a foothold before the ‘rational’ brain directs a viewer to their own precon- ceived beliefs on how to read and respond to the world. This is history re-visioned by stealth via art.”

Gough is a traveller in every sense. Her first big break was having her work selected by Judy Annear for Perspecta in 1994 and, since then, Gough has moved through a series of residencies, scholarships and academic posts, making her way across the globe via destinations including Mauritius, New York, Paris, Liverpool and Ireland. This physical experience of travel fits well with her work and the concept of place is an integral part of Gough’s art practice.

“The point about place for me is by being at various places, I am actively reconnecting with them or learning afresh about places beyond my ancestry and cultural connections, pressing my own ability to face, recognise and move beyond the limitations of having grown up in suburbia,” she explains. “Where possible, I am mostly attempting to see and experience place in the manner of my ancestors. Sometimes it feels close and that is exhilarating.”

In Traveller, 2013, a video depicting Gough attempting to hitchhike her way across Tasmania to culturally significant locations such as the Nut (a giant volcanic plug jutting into the sea on the north-west coast), the viewer watches as she moves through the colonised landscape, screwing together her spears and awkwardly hunting a horse along the way. Often relying on video to document these journeys, Gough uses location and memory to record the precarious links between past and present. She describes this expressive and ritualistic process as “a reteaching of self, as an adult with anxieties, self-imposed constraints and misreadings to work through and excise”.

While most of Gough’s work is centred on colonial and Aboriginal history, her interest in the significance of place and memory has also extended to locales further afield. During a trip to Liverpool, Gough researched the history of Bluecoat Hospital’s school and orphanage, consequently creating HOME sweet HOME, 1999. Struck by the cold, unemotional rendering of gravestones listing the names of 122 children who died in institutions such as Bluecoat, Gough painstakingly took graphite rubbings and transferred the names onto six white mattresses. Forming each name from thousands of tiny pinheads (since many of the children were exploited for labour as pin-makers), HOME sweet HOME became a poignant act of recognition and remembrance. Similar to the fastidious construction of works reflecting her own history, Gough repeatedly uses materials significant to a place to reimagine the past and bring it back into the light.

For Gough, one of the most personally affecting works to create has been Observance, 2012. Over three camping trips to her traditional country of Tebrikunna (the north-east coast of Tasmania), Gough filmed her experience of living within the landscape, alone yet constantly interrupted by eco tourists. “I learnt a lot about life, seasons, plants and animals at that place,” she recalls. “The resonances of the past became clearer and louder with each extended stay.” Further describing the work in an artist statement, Gough goes on to say, “Observance is about trespass. It is a meditation about history, memory and ancestry set amidst the ongoing globalisation of my ancestral coastlands by anonymous groups of uninvited walkers, the descendants of the colonisers.”

Currently working towards solo shows at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne later this year and at Hobart’s Bett Gallery for mid-2015, Gough continues to poignantly inform our perception of the past and reveal how it remains a persistent under- current of contemporary experience. Reflecting on her career Gough observes, “Each work leads to the next and they are all part of a continuum. My work is a kind of pulse, demonstrating I am still alive and responding by making art.” It is a steady pulse that beats strong and clear.

The second series of Art + Soul begins on ABC1 on Tuesday 8 July, 8.30pm, as part of NAIDOC week; it continues over three episodes until Tuesday 22 July.

Julie Gough: Travelling Through History

As an artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist, Julie Gough’s career has been dedicated to unearthing Tasmania’s Aboriginal history and her own place within it.

Being clipped on the head by an eagle is an impressive way to birth a career in art. This is exactly what happened to Julie Gough when she was riding pillion on a motorbike down a remote highway 20 years ago. The eagle hit and Gough reconsidered her options. A creative life of self- discovery emerged on top of the list.

Throughout her artistic career, this renowned Tasmanian artist has journeyed a personal and creative path exploring historical stories and their connection to memory, place and our perception of the past. Her maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage is a strong influence on her work and the desire to unearth the stories of her people runs deep.

“My major motivation to make art is aligned to my ongoing curiosity and concern about Australian history, particularly the colonial period and cross-cultural contact and interactions in the 19th century,” Gough explains. “I am trying to unravel what happened here and reconstruct what was often not well recorded or was even purposely erased or silenced by the colonising majority in terms of Aboriginal history.”

Encompassing sculpture, installation, sound and video, Gough’s practice is interwoven with tradition and history, allowing her work to travel across time to unify the past with the present in a reimagining of unresolved narratives. “Some stories permeate beyond the written or spoken word to plague me,” the artist says. “They tend to present – almost uncannily – the means, materials and techniques by which I can represent those stories in the form of art.” Using found objects such as cuttlefish bone, tea tree and shell, Gough is able to link works such as Locus, 2008, and Fugitive History: Killymoon, Spearloar, Head Count, 2008, back to the encounters of her ancestors, connecting to the native environment and the traces of those who once lived there.

Most recently, Gough’s ability to reimagine the past has led to her inclusion in the second season of Aboriginal art series Art + Soul. Presenter and respected curator Hetti Perkins says she chose Gough for her ability to “accumulate and process information (and misinformation) and chart a course through it”. Having collected Gough’s work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales during her time as senior curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art, Perkins goes on to say, “Julie has always created work with conceptual rigour. She is a natural-born artist, historian, researcher and archaeologist. She makes her work with such conviction and that is what makes her and her art so compelling. Her works have integrity and they are sublimely beautiful.”

Looking over the breadth of Gough’s work, it is clear her career has been a considered process that has evolved through meticulous research and intensive creative study. “About 80 per cent of my available art time is dedicated to researching in the archives and on the ground, outdoors, mostly in Tasmania,” she says. Through this methodical progression of research and making, Gough has developed a unique visual language, conceptually rich with signs and symbols designed to trigger memory and emotion.

In Medical Series, 1994, a collection of metal cases displayed objects such as human hair and plaster teeth, evoking an uncomfortable familiarity and recalling outdated scientific experiments used to determine identity and physical attributes as a way to suggest racial inferiority. “I think art reaches an audience differently than history books and film documentaries,” states Gough. “Artworks bypass a viewer’s regular channels of sought input. They are sensed and felt, they gain a foothold before the ‘rational’ brain directs a viewer to their own precon- ceived beliefs on how to read and respond to the world. This is history re-visioned by stealth via art.”

Gough is a traveller in every sense. Her first big break was having her work selected by Judy Annear for Perspecta in 1994 and, since then, Gough has moved through a series of residencies, scholarships and academic posts, making her way across the globe via destinations including Mauritius, New York, Paris, Liverpool and Ireland. This physical experience of travel fits well with her work and the concept of place is an integral part of Gough’s art practice.

“The point about place for me is by being at various places, I am actively reconnecting with them or learning afresh about places beyond my ancestry and cultural connections, pressing my own ability to face, recognise and move beyond the limitations of having grown up in suburbia,” she explains. “Where possible, I am mostly attempting to see and experience place in the manner of my ancestors. Sometimes it feels close and that is exhilarating.”

In Traveller, 2013, a video depicting Gough attempting to hitchhike her way across Tasmania to culturally significant locations such as the Nut (a giant volcanic plug jutting into the sea on the north-west coast), the viewer watches as she moves through the colonised landscape, screwing together her spears and awkwardly hunting a horse along the way. Often relying on video to document these journeys, Gough uses location and memory to record the precarious links between past and present. She describes this expressive and ritualistic process as “a reteaching of self, as an adult with anxieties, self-imposed constraints and misreadings to work through and excise”.

While most of Gough’s work is centred on colonial and Aboriginal history, her interest in the significance of place and memory has also extended to locales further afield. During a trip to Liverpool, Gough researched the history of Bluecoat Hospital’s school and orphanage, consequently creating HOME sweet HOME, 1999. Struck by the cold, unemotional rendering of gravestones listing the names of 122 children who died in institutions such as Bluecoat, Gough painstakingly took graphite rubbings and transferred the names onto six white mattresses. Forming each name from thousands of tiny pinheads (since many of the children were exploited for labour as pin-makers), HOME sweet HOME became a poignant act of recognition and remembrance. Similar to the fastidious construction of works reflecting her own history, Gough repeatedly uses materials significant to a place to reimagine the past and bring it back into the light.

For Gough, one of the most personally affecting works to create has been Observance, 2012. Over three camping trips to her traditional country of Tebrikunna (the north-east coast of Tasmania), Gough filmed her experience of living within the landscape, alone yet constantly interrupted by eco tourists. “I learnt a lot about life, seasons, plants and animals at that place,” she recalls. “The resonances of the past became clearer and louder with each extended stay.” Further describing the work in an artist statement, Gough goes on to say, “Observance is about trespass. It is a meditation about history, memory and ancestry set amidst the ongoing globalisation of my ancestral coastlands by anonymous groups of uninvited walkers, the descendants of the colonisers.”

Currently working towards solo shows at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi in Melbourne later this year and at Hobart’s Bett Gallery for mid-2015, Gough continues to poignantly inform our perception of the past and reveal how it remains a persistent under- current of contemporary experience. Reflecting on her career Gough observes, “Each work leads to the next and they are all part of a continuum. My work is a kind of pulse, demonstrating I am still alive and responding by making art.” It is a steady pulse that beats strong and clear.

The second series of Art + Soul begins on ABC1 on Tuesday 8 July, 8.30pm, as part of NAIDOC week; it continues over three episodes until Tuesday 22 July.

Kesson, Anna, 2007, ‘If history is a picture puzzle how do all the pieces fit?’ Thresholds of Tolerance exhibition, curated by David Williams and Caroline Turner,ANU School of Art Gallery, Canberra, 9 May – 5 June 2007, catalogue pp.51-55, ISBN 978-0-9803673-0-0